November 20, 2007

 

CBOT Corn Review on Monday: Slips on light speculative sales,outside markets weigh

 

 

Chicago Board of Trade corn futures settled modestly lower and near session lows Monday, unable to maintain gains set on the opening as spillover weakness from lower outside markets and speculative selling kept prices on the defensive for much of the session.

 

December corn settled 2 cents lower and benchmark March corn also fell 2 cents to US$3.94 1/2 per bushel.

 

"Normally the market is strong during the week of Thanksgiving but corn moved lower on spillover weakness from the outside markets as those markets were unable to maintain overnight strength," said Jack Scoville, vice president at Price Futures Group.

 

Gold futures settled almost US$9 lower per ounce and silver declined over 25 cents per ounce. Crude oil trading was choppy and two-sided, and corn was unable to draw much support from energy, a trader said.

 

Light speculative selling limited the upside as participants appeared to be liquidating some of their positions, Scoville said. In open auction trading, commodity fund selling was estimated at 2,000 contracts.

 

Commodities in general were down across the board and corn followed those markets lower, an analyst said.

 

Light wheat-corn spreading added to the selling interest, the analyst said.

 

Export inspections were strong but within the range of analysts' estimates and unable to provide much support to prices, the analyst said. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that 52.287 million bushels of corn were inspected for export in the week ended Nov. 15, within the 38 million-53 million expected by analysts.

 

Technically, March corn was unable to remain above its 10-day moving average, encouraging light selling, the trader said.

 

On daily technical charts, electronically traded March futures settled below the 10-day moving average.

 

In options trading, Rand bought 3,000 December US$3.90 calls.

 

Oat futures ended lower as commercial-led selling kept the market on the defensive for much of the session, a trader said. Light bull spreading of December helped limit nearby losses, the trader added.

 

December oats fell 4 1/2 cents to US$2.75 1/2 per bushel and March also declined 4 1/2 cents to US$2.89.

 

Ethanol futures ended mixed. December ethanol settled unchanged at US$1.865 per gallon and January rose 1.5 cents to US$1.813.